Last year I made my first ever mince pies. From scratch. Own pastry, own filling (and I don’t even really like mince pies).
Here’s this year’s effort: home made pastry, and far too much Robinsons’ filling, too long in the oven.
Ouch hot burny mess
Yuk. . .
Filed under Random
APPARENTLY more new Mums in Northamptonshire are breast-feeding. This is great news. Newborns are meant to be breastfed. Breast milk has loads of natural antibodies which protect babies when they are at their most vulnerable.
But some Mums just can’t get the hang of it. It’s not that easy at first unless you have an excellent midwife who can show you exactly how to do it properly. It can be painful. If you don’t get this early help, or the ‘ick’ factor is just too much, you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it.
You don’t have to do it for long if you don’t want to. Just breastfeeding for a few weeks, days even, will be better than not at all, as it also shrinks your insides back more quickly after the birth (the dreaded afterpains that no-one warns you about). And you don’t have to have baby permanently attached.
There’s nothing wrong with dual feeding – boob and bottled formula combined – or expressing and then putting it in a bottle. Do what works for you, and don’t let the breastfeeding-only Mafia bring you down. New mums have enough to deal with, without feeling guilty that they haven’t breastfed until their offspring start school. . .
Filed under Parenting
“WHEN are we putting the Christmas tree up?” asks Billy on a daily basis. “Soon,” is my repetitive reply. I haven’t even thought about when. I haven’t even started shopping. To be frank, I’m rubbish at Christmas.
I have bought my cards, from charity shops, to ensure the 100 per cent of the money goes to whom it was intended rather than into a supermarket’s coffers. But I must remember to write and send them before December 25.
I should do an online food order, because that’s another thing I leave too late. And only Billy has written a list for Father Christmas, unprompted. He’s a boy who knows what he wants (and that’s football cards).
Bonnie’s technique for telling you what she wants is to sit in front of TV adverts shouting: “Want that! And that!”
“Father Christmas doesn’t listen to little girls with bad manners,” I warn her.
“Want that pleeeease. . .”
Filed under Parenting
Monster slippers
WE seem to have missed out on the heavy snow falls that have ground the rest of the country to a halt over the past fortnight.
However, the cold has been painful. And with an erratic boiler, frozen pipes and the immoral rise in fuel bills inflicted by the greedy gas and electric companies, I’ve turned into my mother.
This means recalling all the things she did in the 1970s to keep our house as cosy as possible. Draught excluders, curtains over doorways, hand-knitted jumpers and extra blankets, yes, blankets on beds.
I’ve so far resisted putting up cling-film on the windows, as fashioned by my dad circa 1978. I do have some windows that aren’t double-glazed, so I’m not completely ruling it out.
We’re a pampered generation, what with our combi-boilers and 15 tog duvets. We’ve become used to mild winters where we still have to mow the lawn in January.
But this winter has been proper chilly. Brass monkeys. Wish-I’d-remembered-my-gloves weather.
At the time of writing, it’s minus 4 outside and I’m wearing a hand-knitted poncho. In green, with a hood. It was intended for summer camping use and hand-knitted by my mum after she made some cute ones for Bonnie. But it’s so toasty, and so much better than those awful fleecy blankets with sleeves which give you electric shocks from the static. I’ve tried to convince her to make lots and sell them on eBay, but she’s too modest, and thinks no-one would want them. Even Bloke wants one. In black.
Keeping the heat in when you live in a house built in 1880 is tricky. The ceilings are high, the ill-fitting doors positively encourage wailing draughts, and some rooms don’t have radiators (like our downstairs loo, which is so cold it might as well be outside).
But it’s surprising what a difference a few old-fashioned tricks can make. You can buy nail-on draught excluders which have a brush at the bottom but I’m not sure they work as well as a sausage-dog stuffed with rags and lentils. Or a knitted snake. Or a pair of old tights stuffed with strips of old towels. In the 70s, when we had storage heaters which only warmed up at night, Mum actually stuffed rags in keyholes.
Doors can be insulated with extra curtains. It doesn’t have to be flash. We’ve used a couple of screw-in hooks and hung a blanket over one. Another has a spring-action net-curtain pole with an old tab curtain hanging from it. It’s not pretty, but it does the job.
We’ve stuck our summer duvet over our winter duvet. The kids’ beds have fleece blankets over their duvets. They kick them off during the night but at least they start warm. And there’s a lot to be said for hot-water bottles and slippers.
Ah, slippers. So under-rated. The older boys believe they are far too cool to wear them, but Billy and Bonnie were more than happy to shop for slippers last week, and now have toasty toes. Mine are cow-print, Bonn’s have pink fairies on, while Billy’s are shaped like monster feet. Perfect.
Filed under Parenting
Review. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Royal Theatre Northampton.
Firstly, I should declare an interest. My two elder sons are in the ‘junior company’ of the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, running at Northampton’s Royal Theatre until January 9th.
However, as any parent who has had to endure school plays will know, it ain’t automatically good just ‘cos your offspring are in it. (Hand in the rose-tinted specs as you leave).
Adam Baxter as Tumnus and Hayley Ellenbrook as Lucy (pic Robert Day)
But I’m not coming to LWW just as a doting parent. I’ve reviewed productions at Northampton’s theatres for ten years or more. As a local reviewer, you have to be honest, not sycophantic, but can’t be deliberately brutal like those who swan in and out of town for the Nationals.
Thing is, this version of the Lion is actually really good. And I am completely ‘meh’ about all the Narnia stories. They just didn’t do it for me as adventures. I’m almost wishing I could find something wrong with the Royal’s version to show I’m not just bigging up something which has my kids in it.
Director Dani Parr has a track record of making un-patronising, entertaining theatre for children. And although this story, published in 1950 and set in the war years, is far from ‘modern,’ our seven-year-old was gripped throughout.
White Witch (Georgina White) and Edmund (Peter McGovern) (pic Robert Day)
You spend quite a lot of time just gawping at the breadth of skills displayed by the actors. The striking and sickeningly-talented Georgina White, when not camping it up as the evil White Witch, also flits on and off stage to the visible ‘orchestra’ areas to play the saxophone and bassoon. All four adults-playing-kids Peter, Lucy, Edmund and Susan are capable singers and also play instruments (did I mention it had singing in it? My kids didn’t either).
The set, as usual with the Royal, is stunning and clever and still manages to surprise. The wooden panelling is a great idea to show the evacuees’ home. And when the Wardrobe is opened to show the snow-bound Narnia, there’s a blast of cold air emanating from the stage to further stimulate the audience . Costumes too, are inspiring (I found myself envying the white queen’s fur-trimmed coat and wondering if I could get away with wearing it for the school run).
Newcomer Hayley Ellenbrook is endearing and believable as Lucy, a role that could so easily irritate by a less able actor. Peter McGovern’s Edmund is suitably detestable, while Mr And Mrs Beaver (Louise Shuttleworth and Matthew Henry) add a welcome touch of humour in a show that’s about as non-Christmassy as it’s possible to be, despite an appearance by the Big Man Himself.
Usually there’s at least one mis-cast member of a production, but in L, W and W I just could fault anyone. Perhaps, just an itty-bitty-trying-to-find-a- criticism would be that there are too many damn children in it. But mine are great. Natch.
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe runs at the Royal Theatre, Northampton, until January 9. Call 01604 624811 for tickets.
Baby Ron, Baby Annabel and Baby Vanessa
OUR two-year-old daughter is freaking me out a little. Or rather, her plastic pals are. Meet Ron, Annabel and Vanessa.
They sleep at the end of Bonnie’s bed, topping and tailing like we did as kids, in the days before ready-beds and futons.
Often when I go into check on the kids on my way up to bed, the terrifying triplets make me jump. By doing nothing more than lying there, staring vacantly, plastic eyes glinting.
Baby Ron and Baby Vanessa are twin dolls given when Bonn was just a few months old and not even vaguely interested in anything except eating and sleeping. They were recently pulled out of one of far-too-many toy-boxes and adopted by Bonnie. “My babies. My sisters,” she burbles away to herself, dragging them around, upside down, by their ankles.
They aren’t exactly cuddly dolls, being of the cheap plastic variety with stiff movement at the hips and shoulders. Baby Annabel is a little posher, arriving a couple of Christmases ago, but she weighs too much for a two-year-old to carry easily. She makes weird noises but thankfully can be ‘put down for a nap’ by flicking a switch hidden in her battery pack.
Baby Annabel’s name is a given – she arrived with it – but what about Vanessa and Ron? Not exactly ‘child-like’ names.
Seven-year-old Billy thinks he came up with Ron’s name. Why Ron? “Cos it’s a boy’s name,” he explained, as if I were a little dim.
And Vanessa? We don’t know any Vanessas. It’s not even an easy name for a two-year-old to say. I’m baffled.
Still, her favoured toy pals have more easily explained names, and are soft enough to be allowed to sleep at her end of the bed. There’s Pom the ragdoll (her dress has apples on it, French for apple is pomme, (how middle class)), Arthur the Rabbit (‘R-for-Rabbit, geddit?) and One-Eye, the bear with, er, one eye. Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple. . .
Filed under Parenting
I’M not very proud of it, but I really lost my rag with our eldest this week. He’s lost his new mobile phone, bought for his 13th birthday just two months ago.
It wasn’t really the phone going missing that triggered the shouting, but the fact he’d lied about it for three days.
I only found out because of a phone call from his minders at the Royal & Derngate Theatre, where he thinks it was lost/stolen. He’d telephoned them to ask if it had been found, and they rang him back on the phone he’d used: mine. Everyone feeling guilty. Me going nuts. Horrible.
What set me raging was not so much about the phone. If he’d told me straight-away, we could have retraced his steps and perhaps have found it. Three days later, no sign. Someone’s had it. Git.
Yes, it feels like a wasted 50-odd quid, and no, it wasn’t insured and the excess on the house insurance is more than it’s worth.
I always tell them, please, please don’t lie, because we’ll always find out and it will make things worse.
But as Bloke pointed out, he’d have been terrified to confess and probably hoped it would be found and no-one needed to know. Which doesn’t make me feel like the greatest parent.
We’ve now re-ordered his sim-card and relegated him back to his un-cool, ancient first phone. Lesson learned, painfully. If you do happen to find a black Samsung Tocco Lite, do get in touch.
Filed under Parenting
THREE years ago our two eldest sons got the parts of John and Michael Darling in Peter Pan at Derngate, Northampton, alongside David Essex.
Jed and Dougie were aged just ten and eight, I was heavily pregnant with Bonnie, and Billy was only just four. After a month or more of ferrying them all back and forth from rehearsals and shows, over Christmas, we were all completely knackered.
And I decided then that it had been a brilliant experience, but we wouldn’t do it again.
Jed and Dougie in Peter Pan with David Essex, Christmas 2007
Fast forward a couple of years and we appear, somehow, er, to be doing it all over again.
This time in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, next door at the Royal Theatre.
Its different. Slightly.
The boys aren’t principal characters with lines, but part of the larger chorus. They are also, obviously, older and more independent.
So how do you suddenly find yourself as the parent of ‘performers’? Isn’t that the mark of the ultimate in pushy-parents? The uber-pushy?
Well no, actually, this has very little to do with us. Honest.
Jed has been part of Northampton’s County Youth Theatre group, which meets every Saturday at Clare Street, for years. Then Dougie joined too, and in a bizarrely casual way they caught the performing bug and wanted to audition for everything they could.
Usually I say no.
However, when they came home asking to audition at the Royal, I wavered.
It’s the Royal’s Christmas show (never call it panto), which I’ve actually been reviewing for the Chron for about the last 12 years, ever since the days of Michael Napier Brown and Vilma Hollingberry (that’ll show your age).
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is being directed by Dani Parr, who I’ve met a few times through her shows for kids, including Where’s the Bear and Flathampton.
So when auditions came around in late summer, I relented.
They auditioned over a weekend alongside a hundred or more other kids (most of whom wore ankle warmers and ‘jazz shoes,’ while my pair wore muddy trainers).
It’s a peculiar experience, the child-actor audition. There’s a lot of waiting around, and everyone has a number. Mostly you’re in and out, and unless they tell you to hang around, you know fairly quickly if they’ve been rejected.
At the end of this one, they called dozens of numbers and took those delighted children away.
We all assumed ours hadn’t got in and got ready to console them and bribe them back to happiness with promises of pizza. But agonisingly, those called out hadn’t got through, and there were more tears than at an X-Factor sing-off.
Rejection is the really tough bit for both children and parents to handle. Beforehand, rather than telling them how brilliant they are, you have to keep reminding them that they might not be chosen – because they are too young, to old, too fair, too dark, whatever you can think of – so the blow is cushioned. At the auditions I saw one parent really losing her rag with the stage manager, loudly demanding to know why her child wasn’t chosen. It was painful.
If chosen, there’s lots of form filling, and laying out of rules. There’s no payment, one pair of free tickets, and you must be on time and available for two months.
You have to get written permission from their headteacher for them to be out of school for some days in December when they’re doing matinee shows – which doesn’t often go down well.
Rehearsals began over half-term, and have continued at least one school night and Saturday or Sunday since. Towards the opening night, on November 30, they rehearse just about every evening and some days.
But they’re loving it. They’ve learned fight scenes with the ‘proper’ actors and a ‘proper’ fight director . They tell me they are playing a hippogryph and a satyr (I had to look it up).
They’re also evacuees, reindeer and baddies. “I’m an imp baddie, and Doug’s an ape baddie, so he doesn’t need make-up,” said Jed, before being tackled to the floor. By the ape.
It’s a relentless schedule. Jed and Doug are doing 22 shows between December 3 and January 8, including Christmas Eve and Boxing Day. But they are one of three junior casts doing a whopping 66 performances. At least this time, they aren’t doing matinees and evening shows on the same day, and get some days off. It’s an extraordinary thing for the theatres to organise.
For the parent, it’s nerve-wracking and a little isolating. You hand them over to chaperones for the fun part and just feel like chief taxi-driver and sandwich-maker. You also have a life and other kids to make feel just as special. The evening shows and rehearsals can finish late, and in our case, with Bloke working away, this means relying on the kindness of a friend down the road to pop up and babysit, or too frequently, putting the sleepy siblings into the car on the PJs. It’s not ideal.
If your child does show a leaning towards performing arts, it’s important to be both encouraging and grounded. Being in theatre shows is a brilliant ways to boost confidence, learn skills and make friends, and it certainly shouldn’t be seen as a step to instant fame and fortune.
If any of my lot want to tread the boards full-time when they’re older, that’s fine. But while they’re still kids, I’d like them to have a normal life and a childhood.
And maybe you have kids who prefer to sit in a comfy theatre seat and watch others dress-up in funny costumes. That’s our Billy’s plan anyway. . .
• Tickets for the Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe are on sale at Royal&Derngate, via the website or box office, on Northampton 624811.
Filed under Parenting
IT’S officially Autumn Sick Week. No really, it’s A Thing. At this point in the school year, pupils and students start dropping like flies. Sick flies.
It’s got lots to do with timing. The weather turns cold and wet. Yet anyone still living with their parents refuses to go out in anything more than shirt sleeves. Then they come home to centrally-heated homes which circulate dry, warm, dusty air.
It’s just after half-term, when everyone has confused their immune systems with lie-ins and changing clocks. Thenthey get tipped back into the bug-soup of school or university.
A year ago at my part-time job at the university, someone warned me about this particular phenomenon. “Don’t get to settled thinking you’ve got good attendance rates, they’re about to plummet.” And sure enough, the students became less numerous. I thought it was just that they’d sussed me out and decided my waffling wasn’t worth getting out of bed for.
However, true enough, after a couple of erratic weeks the classes drifted back to normal sizes.
This November too, my mailbox is littered with excuses for non attendance (I’ve got stricter). They’re all ill and “going to the doctors.” Yeah, yeah, you’ve got a cold.
When two-year-old Bonnie became uncooperative and downright whingy at the end of last week, I should have twigged. She was, to use medical parlance, ‘going down with something’.
Sure enough, after a couple of days inexplicable whining, over the weekend she became the snot monster. Uncharacteristically clinging to my knee and depositing snail-trails of nose juice all over my clothes. Refusing food at mealtimes but demanding ‘jooce’ and ‘toaaast’ at sporadic intervals.
“I poorly,” she announced to anyone who tried to change her plan to lie on the living-room floor watching endless re-runs of Peppa Pig.
When children are ill, there’s often little more you can do than dose them up with Calpol, keep them warm if their cold and cool if their hot, make sure they drink regularly and cuddle them if they’ll let you.
Bonnie only usually wants cuddles if you’re hugging someone else. But when she’s ill she wants cuddles everytime she wakes in the night (which at the time of going to press was about 15 times a night). I put vapour rub in a bowl of warm water on a heater (out of her reach) to help her breathe, and resign myself to several nights of broken sleep. It’s like having a newborn in the house again.
You do have the option of calling the NeneDoc out of hours doctor’s service if your child’s temperature gets high and won’t come down with liquid paracetamol and fewer bed covers. But thankfully, most children are over the worst of a cold or a bug within a couple of days.
And of course, once they’re feeling better, that’s when everyone else in the house catches it, one-by-one. The tissues pile up and you’re forced to re-arrange your working hours to cope.
I’m anticipating my own cold will be caught in about a week’s time, just when I’ve taken on my busiest schedule of work this year. Ho hum.
Oh, and did I mention this is also a point in the calendar when everyone starts bringing home nits again?
Filed under Parenting
Hilary Scott Writes 